July 2010 Blog Posts

I was just mulling over Meryl Dorey's pleas of "We're not anti-vaccination" in the light of this anti-vaccination t-shirt design, and I thought to myself "well, I'm sure I can help!"
So I did
We start out collection with this beautiful number from our winter range. Worn off the shoulder it's sure to make you the belle of the ball!
Feeling flighty? How's about this little cracker?
Or perhaps madam would like something a little more understated for her choice in vaccine-related couture
This next item is modelled by Fifi, our resident entomophobe. Do stop screaming, Fifi dahling!
I don't know about you, but I hope more people "see the...

Short attention span? Skip to the bottom for a version of this post designed specifically for you!
Look, it's like this. I'm worried that this blog is turning into a single-issue publication, I really am. But demolishing the continued utter fail of the AVN is just too easy. It's like shooting fish in a barrel. No, scrub that. It's like dropping a grenade into a barrel of fish and running away very fast.
Above is a screenshot, courtesy of my good friend Peter, from the AVN's Facebook page. This is Meryl Dorey posting a story she's found that she thinks supports her point of...

Courtesy of the NSW Healthcare Complaints Commission:
The AVN’s failure to include a notice on its website of the nature recommended by the Commission may result in members of the public making improperly informed decisions about whether or not to vaccinate, and therefore poses a risk to public health and safety.
Read the full release at the HCCC: Public warning about the Australian Vaccination Network.

The link Meryl has tweeted comes from the conspiracy website nationalexpositor.com. It speculates about commercial-in-confidence agreements signed with vaccine manufacturers, something that's done to provide governments maximum information with minimum commercial exposure. It's not, in principle, unlike an NDA between say, a software company and their developer partners. I've signed a lot of those. They're normal procedure.
Of course, to the National Expectorator, this means they're secret contracts to cover up vaccine deaths. No kidding.
As a taste of their usual menu of paranoia, their top story at the present time is:
"False Flag Cyber Attack Could Takedown The Internet
Billion dollar cybersecurity industry at...

So, apparently, this big beardy guy in the sky already knows everything I'm ever going to do, ever.
But also, apparently, I choose to sin.
What's with that?
Surely if god knows everything I'm ever going to do, I basically have no free will. And if the whole doctrine of sin relies on my free choice in the matter - my choosing to sin, or at least, choosing not to repent and all that - then surely I can't actually, in any meaningful sense, commit a sin. Ever. Because I have no choice. It's pre-destined. All I have is an illusion of choice, because...

Dear, dear readers! You're smart, numerate kind of people. Some of you will have read my previous posts on hokey maths. Some of you can even count.
Can you see how Meryl is lying with numbers? Here's a tip. There's more than one lie.
Tell you what, I'll help you out a little. Here's the NSW vaccination schedule.
And Meryl Dorey's overall claim as that there are 31 doses of vaccine in the schedule by 12 months of age*.
OK, you're seeing it now? No? OK, well allow me to explain.
The first lie is in Meryl's claim that three doses DPaT equals nine doses total. This...

I was just musing, up to my gills on painkillers. And I got to thinking...
It has been said that human beings are not, in fact, Homo sapiens - the Wise Man - but that were are in fact Pan narrans - the Storytelling Ape.
I believe I heard this first from Ian Stewart and Jack Cohen, and it's an idea I'm much enamoured with. It's true that, if anything, humans in general are far from wise. When we think intuitively, we're often, if not usually, wrong. Suckered in by charlatans, tricked by cults, bamboozled by the way the real world works, we invent stories to...

The article Meryl cites is here
The very first paragraph reads:
Pertussis (whooping cough) is a mandatorily notifiable disease in Slovenia and since 1959, there has been an active national immunisation programmme. Since the start of this programme, the annual number of notified cases has fallen sharply [1]
Does that really sound like the vaccine did nothing?
Really?
OK, that's just the beginning of Meryl's fail. Let's delve further.
The study cited is of an outbreak in a kindergarten. Of the 12 kids in the kindergarten, two (16%) had confirmed pertussis, most likely picked up from either the parent cited in the paper*, or the same source as the...

JUST. WATCH.
More will follow later, once I've recovered from the excruciating toothache brought on by grinding my teeth at Meryl's bare-faced lunacy. I'm up to my hairline on strong painkillers right now, but I have plenty of material to use once my head is straight.
Ken McLeod, The McCafferys, Daniel Raffaele, Everyone at SAVN. You are fucking heroes.
Follow #stopavn on twitter, join the facebook group. Do it.

I just had to blog this. It's just too absurd to let slip.
Did you know that it's only possible to contract a single disease at a time?
Yes, really.
Meryl Dorey says so, so it must be true
That's a page from the Winter 2006 edition of the Australian Vacination Network's "Informed Voice" Magazine. If you click and get the bigger version, you'll see that just above "How many is to many?" Meryl has made the following claim:
It is also a fact that we will only ever contract one disease at a time - measles - not measles, mumps and rubella. Measles -...

Another post from my ongoing "Keeping Two Chevrons Apart" series, in which I murder the music of Half Man Half Biscuit for my own amusement and the amusement of other lunatics who happen to stumble by.
Normally, I just do a one-take "live" version on a single guitar or ukulele, because I'm both lazy and time-poor. Today, however, I had some time free, so I have something a little more involved.
Yes, folks, a full-band mix, involving programmed drums (via Hydrogen), bass, guitar (lead and crunch), mandolin, banjulele and vocals. Enjoy.
I enjoyed making it muchly, and here's how it was done.
The Making Of
Ingredients:
...